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OPINIONS
The Need for Promoting Nanotechnology Awareness in Higher Education [+]
Statistics: The Quantitative Discipline of the Scientific Method [+]
The Multidisciplinary Nature of Linguistics [+]
The Need for Promoting Nanotechnology Awareness in Higher Education
IF WE COULD REARRANGE the atoms in coal, we could make diamonds. If we could rearrange the atoms in sand (and add a few other trace elements) we could make semiconductors for computer chips. Nanoscience and ensuing nanotechnology will soon let us manipulate atoms, which will have profound effects on the world and particulary on education. With the development of nanotechnology, we will be able to fabricate products that are environmentally friendly, stronger, lighter, smaller, and more precise.
While we experience the dawn of the Nanotechnology Era, it's our duty to help students become aware of the rapid transformations technology will undergo in their lifetimes.
An outstanding characteristic of nanotechnology is its interdisciplinary nature. The effects of nanotechnology are not limited to science and engineering. New philosophical and sociological challenges will be derived from society's transformations, propelled by nanotechnology. The way we interrelate with one another and the way we do business will change. Ethical issues such as the need to share knowledge and technology will become crucial for the preservation of humankind. The United States Government assigned $500 million to the National Nanotechnology Initiative in January 2000, giving a strong indication of its understanding of the critical role that nanotechnology will play in it's future development.
The impact of this federal decision is already being felt in academia at the graduate level, with Nanotechnology Research Centers flourishing in universities all around the nation (including the University of Puerto Rico, see "Enormous Potential for Shrinking Technology").
At the undergraduate level, The National Science Foundation started the Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education project, which funds initiatives that emphasize: 1) the creation of modules/courses/ certificates of nanoscale science and engineering to be incorporated into existing undergraduate curricula, 2) undergraduate nanoscale science and engineering research opportunities, and 3) text, software, laboratories, demonstration experiments, and Web-based resources that address nanotechnology aspects or issues in connection to any field of study.
Other similar initiatives being launched by the Department of Education, NASA, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health will result in introductory science courses that generate enthusiasm, understanding, and participation in the sciences while introducing all students, science and non-science majors, to nanotechnology and its implications.
At UPR, RP we hope to start nanotechnology discussions in every student's curriculum, to explore some of the legal, ethical, political, and social implications of nanotechnology.
santiago_rivera @centennialpr.net or gmorell@rrpac.upr.clu.edu
by Leonardo Santiago, doctoral student, School of Education, and Gerardo Morell, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Physical Sciences
Statistics: The Quantitative Discipline of the Scientific Method (Reality is more random and volatile than we have so far dared to accept!)
IMAGINE YOU TOSS A QUARTER 50 TIMES and write an imaginary sequence of head as h's and tails as t's. Now actually do the experiment and record what you get.
A fundamental difference typically occurs. The boring sequence of 'htththt . . .' is the one emerging from our brains. The crazy sequence is the reality, something like "hhhhhttttttttt . . ." We have been brought up in a Cartesian system, full of order and determinism, of God not playing dice. Despite our too deterministic minds, "Nature is a frivolous lady, random and unpredictable."
Randomness, uncertainty, noise is the realm of probability as a mathematical basis and statistics as general methodology. To discover the traces of order in a messy world, to attempt to separate the signal from the ubiquitous noise-this is why statistics is everywhere, as the chaser of the unavoidable random.
Statistics is nothing less than the scientific method put into a technology of learning; we have to learn under uncertainty, under errors and random variations. Everything is subject to randomness.
Statistics precedes the data, as Designs of Experiments. It compares different models, tests scientific hypotheses, estimates effects of treatments, approximates values of model parameters, predicts future values, but also assesses the unavoidable errors of prediction, which are a compound of the errors of estimation plus the intrinsic error of real data. Finally, there are optimal decisions to be made, not in the dark of pure chaos, but in the gray of a non-deterministic world.
In July 2003, two important statistical societies, The Institute of Mathematical Statistics and The International Society for Bayesian Analysis, decided to hold their first ever joint meeting in Puerto Rico, during our University's 100th anniversary. Speakers addressed statistical applications to areas as different as insurance, ecology, computer networks, localization of mobile phones, world weather forecasting, and new models for causality in science.
Statistics is one area of the mathematical sciences which is more science than art, in at least two senses: 1) Assumptions have to be justified in terms of realism and 2) Elegance and mathematical rigor are very important, but so is the explanatory power of the method.
The computational revolution has sparked a revolution in statistics. Today, virtually all statistics are becoming computational statistics. Because of this, Bayesian statistics, a probabilistic statistics developed in the 18th century, is now practical. Bayesian statistics yields much better evidence in favor of or against a hypothesis, which has a direct impact on the science methodology.
by Luis Pericchi, Ph.D.
Department of Mathematics
The Multidisciplinary Nature of Linguistics
LANGUAGE IS THE COMMON thread running through all human enterprise. Without a doubt the most significant invention of humanity, language makes possible the safeguarding of history, the transmission of literature and drama, and the encapsulation of philosophy. It is through language that the visual and performance arts, as well as mathematics, are analyzed, and language shares with these the quality of symbolic expression. Cultural and political organization, as well as commerce, cooperative labor, architecture, and social planning, are made possible through the manipulation of oral and written language forms. Language also allows us to peek into the psyche and is the primary vehicle of both education and propaganda. In addition, as the realization of multiple sophisticated physiological and cerebral processes, language represents the crowning achievement of human biological evolution.
Because of the primacy of language in all aspects of human life, linguistics is of necessity a multidisciplinary pursuit. Although a core group of theoretical linguists work on exhaustive analyses of the internal syntactic, morphological, and phonological structures of particular languages, an even larger group of scholars approach language from a multitude of cross-disciplinary perspectives. Among these are anthropological linguists, sociolinguists, psycholinguists, philosophers of language, neurolinguists, and historical and comparative linguists. Linguistics has a vibrant applied arm that directs its attention to such matters as translation and interpretation, first and second language pedagogy, literacy, language planning and policymaking, discourse analysis, and speech therapy.
Unfortunately, despite the centrality of language, linguistics as a discipline is relatively unknown to the general public. Erroneous perceptions of linguists as polyglots or grammarians linger in the public consciousness. Even at the post-secondary level, linguistics is only explored by a limited population.
At the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, there are numerous linguistics courses available within the English Department (at the B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. levels) and in the Graduate Program in Linguistics. In addition, courses on linguistic issues are offered in Education, Philosophy, Hispanic Studies, and Anthropology. The motivated student has many opportunities to become exposed to linguistics, although relatively few do.
What is needed is a serious consideration of the ways in which linguistics can be made more attractive and palatable to students who may be scared off by arcane symbols and abstruse theory. Given that language is the universal property of humanity, linguistics should be promoted as a vital tool for understanding the human essence in all its manifestations, the ultimate multidisciplinary endeavor.
by Alicia Pousada, Ph.D.
English Department
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